MATERIAL CONDITION OF BOLIVIA. 389 



settlement of regions vast and fertile enough to support a population of many 

 millions. 



But during the present century the natural increase has been extremely slow. 

 No doubt in ordinary years the birth-rate greatly exceeds the mortality, occasionally 

 by as much as two-thirds. But many sections of the community are wasted by 

 epidemics ; they perish in myriads, and at times whole districts are changed to 

 solitudes. Statistical observations show that the zone of mean altitude is peopled 

 most rapidly ; lower down the births are very numerous, but they are nearly 

 equalled by the deaths ; higher up in the puna region large families are rare. On 

 these uplands the aborigines appear to resist the rigorous climate even less than 

 the whites and half-breeds. Here a disorder known as ** yellow fever," though 

 quite different from that of the West Indies and Brazil, assumes a contagious 

 character, and carries off the patient usually on the third day. A mottled skin, 

 due to the disappearance of the natural pigment, is one of the commonest affections 

 amongst the Bolivian Indians. 



Agkiculture. 



Long neglected, owing to the greater attraction of the precious metals, agri- 

 culture has resumed its importance as the chief industry of Bolivia, and has even 

 made rapid progress in some districts, and especially in the department of Cocha- 

 bamba. The patient and industrious natives apply themselves with intelligence 

 to tillage, stock-breeding, dairy-farming, the preparation of cheese, jams and other 

 preserves. The potato is the staple food taken in the form of chum, a freezing 

 process in which its natural flavour is completely changed. 



On the slopes of the Yungas zone the Indian peasantry display as much skill 

 as those of the Vivarais or of the Riviera of Genoa in retaining the steep declivities 

 by constructing a series of superimposed inclines with the fragments of rocks. 

 The flanks of the hills are thus disposed in the so-called pircas, terraces rising one 

 above another, each with its own carefully-tilled plot. Besides the alpaca, they 

 rear a fine breed of asses, the only pack-animals employed on the eastern plains. 



The Bolivian peasantry would be model farmers if they were personally 

 interested in the results of their labour. But they possess nothing. The live 

 stock belongs for the most part to large proprietors, whose tenants are not a few 

 Indian labourers, but whole village communities, family groups and clans. The 

 lands under tillage are themselves merely parts of vast domains whose owners, 

 nearly all absentees, direct the works through agents and middlemen. The Aymara 

 peasants, who are deprived of all motive for improving their position, indemnify 

 themselves with their numerous feasts, always ending in drunken orgies. Drink 

 has thus become the national vice. 



A new zone of agricultural enterprise is being gradually developed in the 

 region of the eastern Yungas. Within a recent epoch, the capitalists who had 

 received government concessions of vast domains in these favoured lands, occupied 

 themselves exclusively with the cinchona industry. The native cascarilleros, 



